Start Your Own Fashion Accessories Business

Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success

Eileen Figure Sandlin

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781613082355
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

Basic updating of resources and interviews with successful owners in the fashion accessories business. Trendy entrepreneurs learn how to create and sell their own accessories, buy wholesale accessories for resale or establish their own online or traditional store. Our experts take them step by step from creating a business plan, to setting up a home workshop and office, exploring the market, managing finances, publicizing and advertising the business and much more. Industry professionals and practicing home-based business owners provide unique insights, tips and tricks to ensure success. This step-by-step guide gives aspiring entrepreneurs everything they need to know to turn their passion for fashion into a successful business.

1

Accessorize for Success

It’s more fad-driven than possibly any other industry. It’s extremely fickle, changing with the seasons and dramatically reflecting both the upswings and downturns of the economy. But it’s this unpredictability that makes the $250 billion U.S. fashion industry one of the most fascinating and exciting industries around.

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Considering the monetary value of the industry, it’s not surprising that there are so many opportunities for creative people interested in forging a career in the field. The industry employs everyone from fashion designers and pattern makers to sewing machine operators and textile stylists, as well as a whole raft of people in ancillary professions, including fashion models, editors and writers; advertising copywriters and publicists; educators; and, of course, the people who sell the fashion items to an adoring public.

In fact, one could argue that boutique owners, visual merchandisers, department-store buyers,and other retail industry professionals are just as influential in the fashion industry equation as the designers themselves. They make merchandising decisions collectively that can make or break a product line. They promote young designers through in-store advertising and promotional sales. They also help build brand loyalty by featuring established favorites, which is an increasingly important function in these days of retail-allegiance shifts among some of the world’s best-known designers.

All that Glitters

Fashion accessories command 12 percent of the overall fashion market, or $30 billion, according to the Accessories Council, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of and demand for fashion accessories. Fashion accessories include everything from footwear and handbags to jewelry and watches, gloves and scarves, hats and headbands, belts and ties, wraps and anything else people use to polish their look and create their own style.

This book provides the advice and background you need to start a hip and trendy fashion accessories business. The businesses featured here are grouped into three categories: handcrafted jewelry; handbags and tote bags and belts; scarves and hats. But it’s not unusual in this industry to find accessories businesses that carry a mix of products, particularly when they’re sold in a brick-and-mortar or virtual store. However, because it’s hard work launching a new business and because product categories have their own unique characteristics, demands, and sources, it’s really recommended that you initially focus on a single product line. As you become more familiar with business operations like production, inventory management, and sales, you can entertain the idea of expanding and cross-marketing your product line.

Stat Fact

Although there are no available statistics on the number of fashion accessories designers working in the United States today, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that fashion designers hold about 16,000 jobs. Nearly 75 percent of salaried designers work in Los Angeles or New York.

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While this book covers advice on how to start a brick-and-mortar retail operation, it’s recommended at this stage of your fashion career that you start your business as a homebased virtual or wholesale operation. When you’re trying to adjust to a new career with its unfamiliar demands, it’s important to keep things as simple as possible, and running a retail store, overseeing employees, and managing vast inventories while still trying to have a personal life is a tall order.

There’s another important reason to start as a homebased business: You can get underway with a fairly low investment of capital. Since low and unpredictable cash flow are major challenges faced by new business owners—challenges that have been known to sink even the most intrepid entrepreneur—keeping your expenses as low as possible improves your chances of success.

Entrée to the Industry

No matter where you physically hang your hat, there are several different types of chapeaux you can wear as a new fashion business owner. For instance, you can operate as a wholesaler, buying accessories at wholesale cost and selling them directly to retailers, either by calling on them to show your merchandise, using a sales representative to hawk your wares for you, or selling through an online store. Target markets for wholesalers include retail stores of all sizes, including department stores, boutiques and gift stores; industry trade shows (where retail buyers congregate en masse to do their buying); retail stores that take product on consignment; home shopping cable TV networks like QVC and HSN; and even other online accessories retailers like BagBorrowandSteal.com, which is a website that rents high-end handbags to fashion-forward customers by the week or the month. (If you’ve never seen this website before, go there now—you’ll wish you’d thought of this brilliant sales strategy first.)

Stat Fact

Gen Y consumers (those born from 1965–1976) have established a breathtaking trend of spending more on premium luxury fashion items than any other generation group, according to a 2012 American Express survey. In 2011 alone, their online spending on full-priced luxury items increased by 31 percent over the previous year.

If you prefer the retail side of the business, you also have plenty of sales options but you’ll personally be doing the selling. Among the places you can sell fashion accessories are craft shows, malls, street festivals, and vendor carts; the aforementioned retail stores, which can be brick-and-mortar or virtual; trunk shows (held at your own store or someone else’s); home parties; Etsy.com, which bills itself as “the world’s handmade marketplace;” and even eBay, either through traditional auction sales or in an eBay store.

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On the Block

You might not think that an online auction website like eBay could be the springboard to success as a fashion accessories designer/seller. But don’t overlook this easy-to-use and reasonably priced resource when planning your business development strategy—there are eBay millionaires among us who started out exactly as you are starting today: with little more than a dream and a limited budget.

What makes eBay such a remarkable marketplace is its breadth and reach. “Everyone is the market on eBay—there is no single demographic to describe it,” says Jim “Griff” Griffith, dean of eBay Education. “Your customers are men and women. They’re young and old. They live in every country around the world and they come from all economic backgrounds. So you don’t have to worry about demographics as long as you use the right keywords and item specifics to describe your item.”

The good news is eBay has tutorials and other tools to help you pick those keywords and write the best possible listing. That’s critical because there are a lot of listings on eBay: When this book was written, there were 3.9 million listings in the women’s clothing category and more than 700,000 million listings in the women’s jewelry and watches category.

Rather than discouraging you, those numbers should energize you. There obviously is a big market for fashion accessories on eBay if the numbers are any indication. So go to ebay.com and take the site for a spin. Try listing a few accessories or opening an eBay store. You never know—eBay could be your ticket to worldwide sales and success.

For more information on how to start you own business on eBay, check out Entepreneur’s Start Your Own Business on eBay.

Of course, there’s one more important decision you have to make before you jump into the business: You need to decide whether you prefer to sell custom accessories designed and manufactured by yourself or someone you hire, or whether you’ll buy them wholesale and resell them. If you’re creative, being a designer truly is an exciting ...

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